Photo Credit: SMLions12

Have you ever watched a movie and thought to yourself  ’Gosh this sounds familiar‘ not in the sense of the dialogue perhaps but the general storyline. Welcome to Hollywood. But we can take this same idea and apply it to the way we write. Everything starts as a book (or a screenplay) these days, after all.

While I am not fond of this method, it is a way to get the ‘methods’ right. Take Nora Roberts as an example. Nothing against Mrs. Roberts and her writing, but she tends to follow the same plan for disaster or ‘romance’ in each of her books. It’s because she has found an equation that works for her and she memorized it well.

Addicted Nora Roberts fans know when they pick up her latest book the way she sets up her stories, the way she writes her characters, and they have come to depend on her steady style. There is nothing wrong with this. But take notice.

If it is your dream to write the next great American novel, you may want to take a step back and look at the success that is already hitting the bestsellers list. Stephen King probably would not be the best example as he likes to vary his style and topics widely, but Nora Roberts and most romance are perfect cookie-cutter-examples.

In the event that you model after a great story, not neccessarily a romance but a great story in general; be it mythology and legend, lore, romeo and juliet, alice in wonderland, etc., you have to be aware of what you are giving up.

While you may attempt to keep the integrity of your voice, your perspective, you have to remember to follow the method of the proven madness. Is it a sure fire winner? No. The only thing that is guaranteed in life is Death and Taxes.

Then again, there have been many a writer to make it off a classically themed story; taking a different perspective on a classic/traditional tale. If nothing else it is a great creative outlet. Go ahead and try to rewrite Romeo and Juliet. Many have tried, many have failed, but just try to change one aspect or take a different angle. Perhaps it is set in the 21st century or maybe there is a steampunk revolution going on? Steampunk is big right now…so thats food for thought! Hope this helped.

Would love to hear how you view stories of old translated, changed in terms of perspective, altered in small or even big details. Can you think of a story that doesn’t have a classical root to its storyline in some way?

Thanks again for reading!

Ballet Folklorico Alegria Dancers - Scottsdale Parada Del Sol 2009

I have spent the past couple of months doing everything under the sun BUT edit my writing. Considering I started with 180,000 words and have cut that number down to 91,000 I would say I needed a break.

Of course I would say that. I didn’t want to edit anything else for as long as I lived. But my novel draws me back like a moth to a flame. The time has come. I must continue on my path for my novel.

In my defense, I have had a lot of stuff going on:

• Started College at Arizona State University
• Moved to a new city, Scottsdale~!
• Set up a new ‘office’ space and have been moving furniture around trying to get ‘cozy’
• Procrastinating to the point where I should get some sort of award

Okay, a majority of that is fluff added so I won’t feel so terrible that I haven’t been editing. I have been writing…but I have been starting new projects which have nothing to do with my current works. That is a big no-no. If I have lots of projects going on, my attention becomes even more divided.

Well, now that my first round of midterms are done for the spring semester, I have determined that I need to study A LOT and that I should have my novel as finished as I can make it.

On a positive note, my procrastination has helped me do a few things:

• I am only on Facebook when I am in class, versus all day.
• I auto-post to twitter now, so I don’t tweet-attack the world
• I have been spending a lot more time catching up on my RSS feed (that is important to me, it’s all about the book world! And that is heaven!)
• I have been able to spend more time with family than I have in years (Lots of family in the Phoenix, Az area)

Anything else worth talking about:

I am going to be posting a lot of information on the book world now. Lots of gifting ideas and shopping ideas (Since that is my #1 go-to when I surf online I might as well share the cool stuff I find with you all!)

I am very excited for the 10th book in the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Chronicles by Charlaine Harris ‘Dead in the Family’. For all you Vamp Book haters out there, back off. Sookie is an amateur sleuth stuck in an ugly world out there. She needs our support. (I hear rumors that this, or the next book, may be the end of the series *gasp**begins sinking into a deep depression*)

On a side note about the Sookie Series: TruBlood, the tv show, may be incredibly hollywood-keen but it is a completely different direction from the books. Charlaine Harris doesn’t mind, but it is important that you know: Just because you saw an episode doesn’t mean you ‘know’ Sookie. The first episode remains true about half way through, after that – It’s Hollywood sensationalism. Just wanted to point that out!

Okay, Obviously I am supposed to be editing right now or I wouldn’t write a novel of a post here. Just trying to keep you in the loop (all 2 readers out there – which includes my mom, I am sure) and I hope everyone is doing GREAT!

Have a great day and whatever you do…don’t write that your vampires sparkle. Please. Pretty Please. Or I will stake you *Just Kidding*

Thanks for reading!

Sometimes you just have to let your procrastination flag fly. If you read me often, you know how I feel about procrastination. If not, basically procrastination is the best tool in a writers arsenal. Procrastination is the minds form of idea-seeking, thought-forming, preparation tool. So, as I was saying, let your procrastination/randomness flag fly.

And I’m going to help you out.

Quality Free Desktop Wallpapers are hard to come by when it pertains to writing. It can take some time, scouring the internet, to find something that relates, something that really makes you go ‘Ah Ha!’ and lets your mind stop wandering.

I’ve put together a quick list of free wallpapers I have found that are interesting and pertain to the fiction writing world. So if you are an author and you are on the prowl for a desktop, look no further.

1. The Desktop Wallpaper I myself am Using Now

I made this one number one on my Free Desktop Wallpaper list for Writers because…well, it’s my desktop so obviously I think it is the best. That is not to say there are not other, far more interesting, desktop wallpapers out there.

2. Oceanic Fiction

This Free Desktop Wallpaper by Wallcoo.net is straight out of a fiction novel. Well, not literally but it sure gets the imagination going. It definitely captures the concept of my working series so I’m adding it to the list.

3. City in a Bird Cage

This theme is close to the #1 spot, with the fishbowl. I relate it to fiction. Each and every writer is nurturing their own world in their own way. ‘There can be many like it but this one is mine” and so, in a way, each novel is our little world in a birdcage/fishbowl/snow globe.  I think this is a nice, clean depiction of that.

4. Anthem of the Writers World – Coffee Please!

Coffee Wallpaper by SED Art

This is a good one. Simple, I love simple, and to the point. It’s a coffee cup. GREAT! Because if you are writing a novel, you know…coffee is your only friend.

5. Platinum Conception

Another wallpaper by WallCoo.com and a very literal one if you are looking at writing your novel as a race. I would say it reminds me of the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ theme that is sweeping the nation. But really, it is just a race track through some wonderful terrain.

6. Simply Inspirational : Writer’s Digest Sinclair Lewis Quote

“It is impossible to discourage the real writers — They don’t give a damn awhat you say, they’re going to write. – Sinclair Lewis” This is a great inspirational quote for all aspiring and current writers. This will get you fired up and keep the nagging voices out of the back of your mind, or at least beat them back. Writers Digest has many inspirational quotes as desktop backgrounds, different colors and with different flourishes or plain. If this color and quote are not your style, give Writers Digest a look. I’m sure they have a background to suit just about anyones tastes.

7. The Rise of a Planet

The Rise of a Planet by BaseSciences.com

This wallpaper by BaseSciences.com is a great wallpaper. It is the ‘rise of a planet’ as it is titled, and really that is what a writer does. Out of thin air comes a new world, a new perspective, a new story. It is busy but still clean and it makes plenty of room to put you desktop icons and shortcuts to be easily viewed. I love it!

8. Canticle for Leibowitz – A Steampunk Blogger

Canticle for Leibowitz

Now, this is new and it is relevant to the blogging/writing community. If anyone has been following the ‘Steampunk’ revolution for the past year now, you will know that almost anything ’steampunk’ has been getting published. It is not really new, it was a genre that started in the 80’s and never really took hold until now. Now it is a freakin’ epidemic.

Am I going to change my writing style right this minute for a fad that may or may not be around for a while? I honestly thought about it, but I think it is a safer bet for the new writer that isn’t set in a genre yet. This has sparked revolution in everything from books, to fashion and I’m guessing many other things. Regardless of where Steampunk is going, this wallpaper is definitely unique and speaks to the Steampunk crowd.

9. InkBlot Butterfly – All things Inkblots

Inkblot Butterfly

The caption reads ‘What do you see here’ and whether you like butterfly’s or skulls, inkblots are a great way to rip into that skull of yours and take a peak at the patterns your mind chooses to see. There is a nice collection of inkblot wallpapers on the internet. If you ever get stumped for some ideas to go into your novel, just give your mind a little self-examination. I don’t recommend dumping your pen on your desk and smearing it around…that could be messy. But you could look into inkblots online. Some seriously artsy stuff going on.

10. Something to Make you Laugh

Better Writer by ScumIcons

This is a funny, albeit rude, wallpaper by ScumIcons on DeviantArt. I had to put it on the list because I’m not a fan of Stephanie Meyer. If you ask, yes I have ‘read’ her and I did like one ‘phrase’ of her twilight series very much.

But can you really call it literature if only one phrase was memorable and the story itself was an emo-success? I’m sure hundreds of misunderstood teenage girls are going to throw themselves off of cliffs when they find out that their precious 15 year old exboyfriend either a) doesn’t sparkle or b) moves away.

I’m just saying…good for you Stephanie Meyer, you made reading ‘cool’ again and that’s a huge accomplishment. But consider this your ‘one hit wonder’.

WELL Folks! That’s it for the ten wallpapers I found that were great picks for writers. If you found some or designed a free desktop wallpaper for writers, feel free to leave a link back to your page!

As always, thanks for reading! Hope this helped you procrastinate into the next scene of your novel. If you are still at a loss, go ahead and poke around. I’m sure I have some more useless ramblings that could spark your brain into a tizzy…eventually…

Photo Credit: Allen Hsu

Content is King – that is the mantra online and for good reason. Content keeps your traffic up, the interest going and keeps people looking at your ads. But today we are comparing the ‘content farms’ of the online world to the average Joe blogger.

Outsourcing is a great way to give your readers a constant flow of content. But for this example, talking about content farming, let’s pit the average Joe professional blogger to the corporate ‘The Man’ monster company in it for the numbers. We are looking at traffic, we are looking at quality and we are looking at content. Normally, you can expect your quality of content to reflect your traffic and vice versa. This is a very simple reward system.

In the online world, should you write quality content you are rewarded with traffic to your site. To explain simply without getting into the nuts and bolts of SEO, Google decides you are more relevant by throwing you in the search  and seeing how many people click on your site from there. No one nominates you besides your readers. You get ‘Dug’ and ‘Tweeted’ about and thus you start your own viral marketing for having quality on your site.

A quick overview of what a Content Farm is: a ‘catch all’ website that covers every topic possible, with low quality to medium quality writing and low amounts of actual information written to turn a quick post and a quick profit.

With some websites out there, called ‘Content Farms’, you will see a breakdown of this ‘reward’ system. The breakdown happens when places like EZine.com produce mass amounts of low quality product and floods the search engines. It makes it hard for quality to surface because the ‘surfer’ has to wade through pages of search engine results of, well, crap.

What happens? The person that ‘queried’ (searches a term) finds crap but instead of looking on page 20 of the search results, gives up and tries a different query. This is a serious problem. And there is good a good rumor on the horizon. I have heard: Though I can’t remember where: That Google, who prides itself on its secret algorithms, is taking a serious look at battling the flood of low quality articles coming from content farms.

(I delayed publishing this post for almost a week trying to figure out where I heard this rumor online and I can’t validate it. Please take it at face value. I have no actual proof that Google is working on this algorithm other than ‘I think they are, I heard they are…I think’ and I’m sorry for that.)

This presents a problem but I don’t know how serious. If you are running a medium or small sized content farm, chances are that you outsource a large portion of your post writing. If you are a small enough company/operation, then you probably make sure to pay for quality. (I hope.) And if that is the case you don’t have a lot to worry about. If, however, you are posting zero-information-high-external-link content, you may want to watch out for this rumor I’ve been hearing.

Does this mean abandon your little content farm immediately? I couldn’t, in good conscious, tell you to do that if it is making you money. It’s up to you and even I wouldn’t abandon something turning a profit until the last minute. You may as well just ride out the content farming wave as long as you can if you have a substantial amount invested and are seeing good returns.

Do I think this is a good time for the average Joe to get into content farming or to start outsourcing articles and posts to compete with the big boys? No. I don’t. Simply, You may be building slowly, but you have a few advantages over the ‘big boys’ that will have you rising to the top.

• You have a personality and it is embedded in your posts (We call this Branding)
• Your posts, while slow to write and accumulate, are ( I assume) of the highest quality because you care about pride and respect, etc.
• You are building a person-to-person loyalty slowly out of your readers. I’m sorry but have you ever heard someone say, ‘I can’t wait until So-and-So who writes for eHow.com puts another interesting link ridden article out about randomness!’ It just doesn’t happen.

So if you are thinking about getting into content farming, STOP! Stop thinking that outsourcing articles for fifty cents a pop will save your blog and increase your readership. If anything, you are going to drive away the fan base you have because the quality will plummet.  If you are going to outsource, be sure to paying for the quality, well constructed articles that will have your site/blog rising to the top of the internet ‘slush piles’ of these content farms. That’s right, I’m not knocking outsourcing. I’m saying :

• Take your time in finding writers that match your style and interests
• Don’t Encourage Sweatshops in India and around the world by paying .50 per post
• Keep your quality at the same level or higher
• Don’t rely on outsourcing – Your readers will begin to tell or worse: will forget your ‘writing style’ in the flood of ghost writers posing as you.

Will Google attempt and/or succeed at weeding out and penalizing content farms? Only time will tell but with the research and funding that Google throws at its main money maker, Search Engine Results and the adjacent ads, I am sure they will fix this monkey-wrench-in-the-machine.

After all, the real threat to Google are Subscription Services offering high quality content in return for filtering out the slush piles. They are coming…content by subscription because…people are tired of spam, landing websites that are 100% ads and articles dancing around an idea but not offering any information or solutions.

Our Lesson? Quality is going to be winning out over Quantity very soon. Stop counting your pages and start counting your loyal traffic numbers because the numbers will lay in loyalty and that will get you skyrocketed to that exlusive Top 10 spot in Google Results soon enough.

Of course, the majority of this post was opinion. I heard a rumor, can’t remember where I heard it but want to know what people think. Do you think Google is working on an algorithm to combat content farms that are clogging up the search results? Do you think it helps or hurts Google that so many content farms are pumping out as much as 4,000 articles/posts a day? Will this affect you in any way? Are subscription services for quality content the wave of the future?

Thanks for reading and as always, please comment, subscribe or just send me an email to tell me what you think!

I’m sporting the awesome palm centro. Yeah, I downgraded from the HTC Tilt ages ago because I kept breaking it and I wanted an easy phone for a while. Now I am drooling and chomping at the bit as my eyes scan over the vast array of smart phones. But in a market flooded with ’smart’ phones and ‘crack’ berries – Picking a phone has become almost as complex as picking a car. You need as seamless a transition as possible. It has to be faster, smaller, thinner, lighter, more durable and be, well, MORE.

I’m looking at several things that are key: touch screen – slab phone is preferred – email, texting, mobile documents, takes photos, social media connection and it has to have some cool apps and potential. Now, potential is misleading. When I say I want potential, I want it to be a ‘first adopters’ kind of item. I want to be leading tech trending and I want people to stop me and ask ‘What is that?’ or say ‘Oh, that is so cool. I want one’.

So here is where we are at when it comes to phones that are flooding the market and doing well.

Blackberry

‘Crack’berries – I’m not going to consider them at all. Why? Because the palm Centro has the same dedicated keyboard and the little tictac keys drive me crazy now.

iPhone

As much as I hate to admit it, I have been considering an iPhone for some time. Why don’t I have one yet? Because I don’t like the apple trend. I’m sorry, I am not an ‘apple fan boy’ or ‘fangirl’ as would be in my case. However, I have to recognize some aspects:

Pros: Great web experience, multi-touch is pretty awesome, it’s now extremely cost-available to just about everyone, the app store has a crazy amount of apps, it is a slab phone and I really like slab phones. Now the cons: They break easy. I have known several owners of iPhones to break the screens within the first week or at least the first month from the simplest drop. That is scary. It is a monopoly – nothing open source there – the app market is flooded (lots of crap and not alot of free stuff), it was trending three years ago – now everyone and their dog has one. And last but not least – this product wont get any better. This is it for the iphone. The only thing they can do past what they already have done is include a butler to carry it around for you and tell you that you are wonderful every ten minutes. iPhone is no longer leading, it’s lagging. There has to be something else…

LG Prada

Now, I loved this phone the first second I saw it. Why? I’m a lover of fashion and it is the ‘Milan’ of phones. What can it do? It’s pretty much a phone, with some neat touch screen and a few little gadgets to entertain. But it’s not really a smart phone. It seems to have shody construction, not customizable, poor reviews and the list goes on. I don’t really care. It is a full touch screen, only a few select buttons at the very bottom, and it says Prada on it. Okay, so this is a very ‘label whore’ kind of phone. What are the cons? It doens’t work with GSM Sim chips. So, I can’t use it. Would I? Yeah. It was pretty and shiny and I haven’t seen one person with it (maybe because as a phone it sucks) Darn…my search continues.

HTC Tilt 2

Well hello wonderful. You are all kinds of beautiful.Ever since the HTC Tilt first edition I have been in love with HTC. They put out consistently good products (in my opinion). It does just about everything the iPhone does and then some. Pros: touch screen, slide out full keyboard, great for email, texting, customizable and it is a set up I am used to. All around, a great phone. Cons: The keyboard, while thinner than the last two editions, still makes the phone thick. And I know this phone, it is just a skinnier, prettier version of that phone I kept dropping and breaking. Okay, one time I got stuck in a rain storm so that is not really fair to the phone but, as I was saying, I know this phone. I want something shiny and new.

HTC Pure

Also great. Not just great, it is a slab phone, no keyboard, still by HTC and it seems very user friendly. It is pretty much the same phone as the Tilt2 except slicked down without the keyboard. Just your average sexy slab phone. Apparently, reviews say it has a lot of screen-sticking, randomly turns off and is generally ‘posessed’ by some higher being and does whatever it wants. I’m not a fan of ‘butt dialing’ so let’s keep looking…

Did I mention I am the ultimate Google FanGirl? And I love HTC?….well, of course I would never have thought the two things I love so much in life would merge…

We have our winner. Say hello to …

Google’s Nexus One

An Andriod phone by Google and HTC. I have died and gone to phone heaven.

I’m actually very suprised I didn’t know this phone existed. I had heard that Google had an android phone called ‘Droid’ (or something) but I didn’t know this was it. Actually, this seems to be Googles second go at an android phone. And this one seems to be a real winner. Why? Let’s go over it all here…

* Slab Phone

* Full Touch Screen except one click-roller-ball (I can deal with that)

* Google Voice is easily added and Free: Transcribes Voicemail automatically (YES! I hate listening to my voicemail)

* Google Maps is pre-installed (What?! You can get a dash attachment for it and set it up as a GPS for your car too? Sweet!)

* Gmail accounts (multiple) are added during your set up (This is a biggie for me: I’m constantly screening multiple email accounts.)

* Some really neat paid and/or free apps in the Marketplace including a neat ‘lighter’ one that acts like a real lighter which I can use during concerts (awesome!)

* Browser is quick – Facebook/YouTube/Media Rich websites are displayed in full browser in amazing time. Super!

* Comes with video tutorials instead of a book (Thank you, I read enough through out the day)

* Wallpapers are ‘Live’ meaning they respond to touch. You will have to watch one of the ‘commercials’ to understand. But it is awesome.

* I consider this the leader in phone technology at the moment. We should be moving toward open-source, free and faster. Nexus One does that.

Cons: If you are not on the TMobile network, then you are going to cry. This bad boy is 550.00 at the moment. That is a big price difference from the easy-cheesy 100.00  (8 gig – with service contract) for the iPhone but the difference is the customizations and free services offered on the Nexus One. The custimization and fluid transition with Google services is important because a majority of my life is stored via Google. Please, spare me the ‘1984′ speech about world domination. Google makes my life easier.

Overall, I’m favoring the Nexus One but am going to wait. It seems AT&T is getting ready to offer android phones (See press release here) and I would love to see how that goes. For now, I will deal with the tic-tac keys.

When I get the Nexus One, I will write a review of it live in my hands after I have had it for a little while and have become fully aquainteted. After all, my phone is my constant companion. It is my computer away from my computer. I need to keep up to date on my email, banking, appointments, stay direction oriented and still do all the regular phone stuff like talking, checking voice-mail and texting. The Nexus One and I will have a lot of bases to cover.

Thanks Google and Thanks HTC, for teaming up and making an awesome product. Now..let’s see if the product-promising-the-moon can deliver in real life. Look for my full review on how all this shopping around turns out! Thanks for reading!

Wave of Anguish by Samuelviani

Photo Credit: Samuelviana

I am working hard on the edits. Can you believe I lost half of my novel yesterday? It’s hard for some writers to remember that no matter the name, Anne Rice, Stephen King, or Dean Koontz, all novels start out on paper. Whether it is parchment and quill(old school) or a word document (our modern day typewriter) it starts somewhere.

So long as you have your words and some version of pen and paper, you’re armed like the best of them. In celebration of losing half of my novel in my computer for a few hours last night, I am going to share a tidbit with you. So here it is, an excerpt from my upcoming novel that I think you will enjoy. So….happy writing and happy reading!

Excerpt from Past Mistakes: A Novel by Karisha Prescott

“…I had always wondered if angels cried during battles. I wondered how angels chose to save combatants from pain. Would relief come swiftly at death’s door for the good alone? Is it justice to allow some to suffer more? Or do the angels simply work as quickly as possible? Angels must dread the days of human wars. Angels must loath the thought of so many suffering, such a high cost for such fleeting and empty reward for but a few.

I stared a long time at the ceiling. The brown wood beams blended with the mud stucco that made the little house. Today there would be talk of war. Today I would have a role in the death of some or the death of many. There is no telling the outcome. There could be no question that there would be death. It was a question of whom, when, and why. But these people had lived so long in fear and the body count was only beginning. If the Order were allowed to hunt free-range much longer on the limited population of humans, it wouldn’t be long until the world would be consumed by their evil…”

***

Thanks for reading! Please leave comments and questions below. Have a great day!

M.A.C. Black and Blue Smokey Eyeshadow in Super Macro on Green Eye

Photo Credit: DreamGlow

It can be  hard for a writer to balance writing, editing, marketing, advertising and still maintain a relationship with the readers. The relationship with the readers is the enjoyable part, as is the writing, but the stuff in between can seem endless and frustrating.

I am happy to say I am having a lot of fun with the launch of my book coming up. The launch is late but for the best. Some great changes, some added features and …well, you’ll see!

So far we are looking at:

• The Book Website
• New Graphics
• New Videos

Bonus reader-interactive features that will be unveiled shortly!

What do you think of as the foundation of YOUR book launch?

By far, the book launch and marketing/advertising aspects are the most difficult. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun!

Be sure to keep an active interest in your book.

From beginning to end!

Past Mistakes ~ Sample Chapters by Karisha Prescott

Postcard - The Cat Girl by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos

Photo Credit:  Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos

Whether it is someone ‘moving your cheese’ or leaving only a quarter of a glass of milk in the refrigerator, we all have those little strokes that get us steamed. It could be the smallest thing but it gets us irritated big time. I thought it would be entertaining to go over a few of the things I find most irritating. Enjoy!

1. Phone Ringing:

I don’t know why but the sound of a house phone ringing is like nails on a chalk board. I can’t stand it. Even my cell phone is on silent. I haven’t heard my cell phone ring in about a year or more. So when I hear someone else’s phone ring, or I hear a house phone ring, I wince. I just can’t stand the sound. Maybe it is the shrill pitch or the insistence of the noise. I don’t know. But it bothers me.

2. Leaving a Kitchen Cupboard Partially Open

I am short. My exact height has my face lining up with the bottom corner of kitchen cupboards. It’s sort of like a ‘short blind spot’ because I never see that sharp angle until it has whacked me in the head or pocked me in the eyeball. I have never understood why people leave cupboards partially open, or open at all. It makes sense to me to close them. Maybe because I have walked into the sharp corners so often, regardless it is a severely painful irritant.

3. Using Headphones

If I am using headphones in conjunction with my computer speakers I am usually doing it because I want to listen to my music loud but don’t want to bother roommates or neighbors. I’m trying to be nice. But if I have my cute little earbud headphones plugged into my computer speakers and I move to either get up or turn around and they yank on my ears, I get swearing angry. I guess my neighbors think I am very quiet with spurts of Tourettes syndrome. Oh well. I know I do this to myself and it is no one else’s fault, but it still irritates me. I’ve resorted to only wearing my little ipod and clipping it to my shirt. It helps. But still.

4. Chairs that Spin

That is right. I talked about the short factor before. Another great part of being short is that chairs are never the right height for me. I can either sit all the way back in the chair properly and let my toes barely graze the floor or sit on the edge so I can have my feet flat. I don’t mind so much unless I am sitting down to work or study. Then I get the phantom chair syndrome which is where I sit properly and end up with an abs workout. That is right, because I can’t touch the floor except with my tippy toes, the chair spins on its own every few seconds. It looks like I’m swiveling the chair right and left but really I am trying to get the chair to stop pulling me to the side. Tell me that wouldn’t bug the heck out of you?

So I have to make sure the chair is adjustable and it is adjustable for short people, like me! Because as much as I love having firm abs, I like being able to concentrate on my writing more.

5. Automatic Updates and Tech-y Settings

I admit it, I have a geek streak. It’s all good. But I get very irritated when I update software and they automatically check those little ‘settings’ in there that make the program auto-start in my registry keys. I don’t need five hundred programs auto starting on my computer if I only use them once every few weeks.

And I don’t like the updates – Specifically Apple and my security Operating system updates – that they try to auto-restart my computer. I get a little pop up with a count down. This is WHY I set my settings to download whenever and update when I TELL them too. Still, regardless of settings, I get a little pop up ever now and again that is basically ‘I don’t care that you are trying to save that draft or edit this page, I’m going to shut down your computer in ten…nine….eight’ and this is where I start swearing profusely and wishing I could tell Microsoft to find some dark hole to crawl into.

Alright. That is my Friday Five Rant basically. These are things that are little but irritate me in a BIG way. I don’t know why, I just get irritated with them. Call me crazy! Of course I hope everyone is having a great day and would love to hear your own little quirks and irritations about random things!

Day 48 - No Idea by Christophe Verdier

Good Options for things to Write about:

2008-1-26 (Editing a paper) - 31 by Nick's Events

Photo Credit: Nick’s Events

Do you know how spell check works?

“Of course” you say.

Do you have 50,000 words or more (possibly from NaNoWriMo)?

“Of Course!” you say.

Are you making progress editing your novel?

“Of COURSE…not,” you say.

Don’t feel bad and don’t feel alone. In the wake of NaNoWriMo you should just be glad you have gotten this far! Now, to be perfectly honest, 50,000 words is not a complete novel. But you don’t want to hear that and we are not here to talk about that. We are talking about editing.

I am sure it has been done, created, marketed and promoted somewhere else, but you should be working on your ‘Edit Your NaNoWriMo in 30 Days!’ or something catchy.

“How?” you ask.

Well, even if you spend at least three days on each chapter…that is ten chapters edited in a month.

“But it looks like such a HUGE file!” you say.

It is a huge file. But stop psyching yourself out. Look at it like this.

• If you break it into small enough steps, editing, than it is easy.
• If it doesn’t seem easy, you haven’t broken it into small enough steps.
• Think ‘baby steps’, in other words ‘One Chapter at a Time’
• Use FastPencil.com

Okay, this last part is only a suggestion but it helps. It’s what I have been using. They set you up with a ten chapter model ‘project’ for your book and as you edit each chapter, you just lay it out.

I am not saying print and publish with them. That is a completely different issue and one you should research fully as to what best benefits and suits you. What I am saying is the interface is easy to use, it is free, and you can even connect with other authors. And if you only want one copy of your book you are all ready with them. They run about the same cost as other services and it’s already laid out in their program.

If you don’t want to use FastPencil to publish, then you can utilize their layout and easy breakdown of chapters. Lay it out, organize your story, name your chapters and then you will have a better overall view. You don’t see a never ending cascade of text in a word document. Instead you see a couple thousand words in each ‘chapter’ and you can just work on ‘One Chapter at a Time’.

Baby steps. No one every wrote a book in a day (unless they were insane) so don’t think you have to sit down and edit it in one day. But you do have to start. Just like writing, in order to have a finished product you have to edit.

Try Baby Steps Like this:

* Work on One Chapter

* Start with just what the SpellCheck Program picks up

* Go through just ONE chapter and see how it reads.

* Go back through the chapter and look for plot-holes thus far.

See how easy this is? Breaking it down like this? I find it easier than saying ‘I’m going to read the whole thing and look for plot holes. Then I am going to read the whole thing and look for punctuation. I am going to read the whole thing and only look for…getting burned out. Especially your first pass of editing through your book, you are going to have pages dripping red and you are going to feel overwhelmed again.

Just. Start. Small.

Some days I day dream about hiring someone to edit all 130,000 words…and then I worry about losing my writing style and voice in the edits. But hiring someone is an option. It’s whatever you feel comfortable with. But that Next Great American (Insert Country/Nation Here) is not going to edit itself sitting on your desktop. Don’t let it collect virtual dust. Get to it! The world is waiting for you!

http://www.KarishaPrescott.com/

www.KarishaPrescott.com/

KarishaPrescott.com